Allow player to look over shoulder

[doveman 7]

I find it rather annoying that freelook doesn't let me look over my shoulder [ maybe it should be called sort-of-freelook ;) ] as I can IRL but instead just results in me staring at my shoulders.

I've made a ticket so hopefully enough of you will agree and vote for it, so that BIS will fix it.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=16544

[lev 21]

Strongly agree with this one. It should not be too hard to do either.

[rye1 21]

Shoulder checks, check! Voted.

[Greenfist 1863]

Are you sure about this? I can see clearly over 360 degrees around me with freelook. Only thing slightly blocking my vision when looking behind me is the backpack or combat vest but thats only when I'm prone. But thats only realistic - you can't really look straight behind you with all that gear when lying down.

[rye1 21]

360 degrees with freelook must hurt your... neck. :P

[Greenfist 1863]

Well, the head turns only about 270 degrees (or 135 degrees from the center) and the eyes the rest 45°. In the game that is, I'm not an owl myself. But I do like to hoo a lot too.

Anyway, I can't see anything wrong how it works in the game. My shoulders don't block my view.

[10t 12]

You're not... crouching, are you?

I read the ticket you raised. The bit I agree with is the "torso should twist too" bit, but - except for deadzone - I don't think it's coming in a hurry. And don't think the programming effort would be worth it, because I don't have any trouble seeing as far over my shoulder as I want. Maybe there's something funky going on with your FOV?

[MissionCreep 12]

If you were carrying a large pack, a tube or parts of a weapon, looking over your shoulder wouldn't do you much good - you would have to turn to look around.

Well, the head turns only about 270 degrees (or 135 degrees from the center) and the eyes the rest 45°.

Try turning your head 135 degrees while keeping your shoulders pointing straight ahead. If you can do that, Circ-de-So-Lame wants you to work for them. I can turn 135 degrees each way if I turn my head and rotate my shoulders from the hips. When you are carrying a heavy load (as we typically do in Arma - who wants to go into battle with 2 spare magazines and a couple of grenades?), it is easier to stop and rotate yourself than twist your spine and destabilize yourself and your lower back under load. You have to stop continuing to move forward anyway no matter what, because you have taken your eyes off the direction in which you were walking/running.

Edited December 13, 2013 by MissionCreep

[Greenfist 1863]

I, personally, can't turn my head 270 since I'm not that kind of poultry. But the fact you can in the game, only reasonably simulates the real life ability to look behind by reaching your neck further and strecthing and twisting and all that. It may not look exactly like it would IRL but the result is the same, hence, the I can't see no fault in the game.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

There is literally no need for this. I've over 700 hours of Arma 3 time (Don't doubt me), and i've never had a problem watching my own back. If you free look, turn all the way right, and than ll the way left. You can already see 380 degrees, due to the fact that when you look all the way left, your seeing your 8 o clock centered, but peripheral vision allows you to see slightly more than straight behind you. If you don' understand what i mean, go in game, and start looking around. Try it prone too, that's when i use it the most. Notice you can see both legs all the way left, and all the way right, meaning you see all of what is behind you. I'm guessing you don't check both sides often, because if you only check one side, it limits your vision. ALWAYs, constantly check both shoulders. No need for them to add further viewing.

[doveman 7]

OK, I did some testing with a mission (Operation Aspis - Part 1) where I could switch between different soldiers with varying loadouts and I found:

1. It generally seems that soldiers can look further over their left shoulder than their right. Using Alpha 1-1-3 Autorifleman as an example as his back is relatively clear. Maybe this is explained by the fact that he's holding the rifle in his right hand but shouldn't he be able to be able to rotate his upper body slightly so that he can look as far in both directions? Looking left I can pretty much see my six, except for a small blindspot but looking right it's limited to maybe 4-5'o'clock. I can also do some pretty weird stuff looking left, like look back at my own chest and radio as if my head was on a stalk but that doesn't bother me as it doesn't affect gameplay.

2. Crouching does cause the soldier to lean forward a bit/hunch his back, so that his harness somewhat blocks his six but not unreasonably and his shoulders are still not in the way, although that varies depending on his load-out of course.

3. Moving forward whilst crouched causes the soldier to lower his body almost parallel to the ground which does of course result in him looking at his shoulders when turning his head. I guess this is realistic and necessary to maintain balance although I wonder if IRL he couldn't just raise his head a bit to see better.

4. Lowering the weapon also lowers the shoulders, providing a clearer view over the shoulders.

5. Moving forward with the weapon lowered actually results in the shoulders moving around more and them (or any attachments) blocking the view more than when moving forward with the weapon raised (I don't mean combat stance which obviously makes him go a lot slower). This probably makes sense though as although he doesn't appear to be moving any faster, having the weapon raised forces him to keep his upper body more stable.

6. Soldiers seem to have a tendency to sway their upper body quite a bit (idle anim?) whilst I'm looking over my shoulders, which causes them to get in the way and block the view intermittently.

So it's probable that on the MP missions (which is all I've been playing lately) that I encountered this issue on I was either wearing a backpack, was moving forward or possibly crouched and moving forward.

So the only issue after further testing seems to be 1. It seems that when looking over my left shoulder, whatever the furthest point my left eye can see should be roughly the furthest point my right eye can see when looking over my right shoulder (this certainly seems to be true for me IRL with little or no upper body twisting, although as I say this difference may be explained in Arma by the fact that he's holding a weapon in his right hand, even when it's lowered, or due to the weird head-stalk thing allowing him to see further behind him when looking left. Not as big an issue as I previously thought then but at least I've learnt something about the way stances and movement affect my view ;)

It may be that, as suggested, there's something wrong with my FOV, as some of you seem to be saying you can see directly behind turning in either direction (backpack permitting) which doesn't seem to be the case for me. I did notice that a house looked smaller when it was in the centre of my view and got bigger when it was at the edges, which seemed rather weird!

I do wish that upper-body rotation would be added so that we can aim down our weapons more to our left or right whilst moving forward then we can at present, as it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to have weapons covering our 2 and 10 o'clocks without having to face in that direction and crab-walk sideways but that's a different topic and I only mention it because upper-body rotation could make the freelook feel a bit more realistic as well, although I accept that it might not be worth the effort if we can already see as far as we could IRL anyway.

Edited December 14, 2013 by doveman

[arotished 10]

Someone have been watching to much Exorcist.

[doveman 7]

Someone have been watching to much Exorcist.

Have you? OK, thanks for sharing.

[lev 21]

I don't think people understand exactly why this is needed. In real life you tend to turn your torso towards where you are trying to look. Rarely do you ever stand perfectly still and just turn your head to look behind you.

In Arma, the purpose of freelook is to do a situational awareness check around you without losing your primary facing (which should be towards the direction you are trying to cover). However, with this current implementation of head turning, it isn't possible to see behind you when you have a backpack or larger item strapped to your back. This is understandable because solely turning your head would produce this effect of having your view blocked by gear. However, in real life, you would actually slightly turn your torso to allow you to see behind you even while you maintain a constant facing thus removing the gear from your direct rear view. You can even do this while running or moving in the direction of your facing. In Arma, this effect can only be produced by actually turning your facing in order to allow your head to pivot which is what this ticket is trying to address.

The devs could even implement a slight torso turn animation as the view begins to exceed the range of when someone would normally keep their body still. Obviously a true simulation would allow the player to control their torso turn separately from their head turning but due to the limitation in control surfaces as well as the unnaturalness of this control scheme, it wouldn't really make much sense. So the best solution is probably to either implement an uncontrollable torso turn as described before or to just simply reduce the blockage of vision due to the gear you are wearing behind you.

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

The devs could even implement a slight torso turn animation

Aiming deadzone? :P

[lev 21]

Aiming deadzone? :P

Nice try, but if you put a little thought into it you would see that it serves an entirely different purpose. Aiming deadzone is designed to change the player's body facing (where you point your gun) not the player's head rotation or direction of sight. It turns the player's torso first until you hit the deadzone limit and then it turns the facing. This is completely unrelated to the problem we are trying to solve which is preventing objects you wear on your back to completely block your sight. This "slight torso animation" would have to be where the torso does not move until the rotation of the head exceeds a natural limit and then the torso begins moving with the head as it turns further. This is a visual effect that you would see in 3rd person but not in first, the point is the player doesn't feel the torso move whereas aiming deadzone creates that sensation that your torso is turning or aiming your weapon.

Interestingly though, if we wanted to modify Arma's control scheme to more realistically capture the body's motion we would have to drastically change the controls around to the point where even experienced players probably would not be comfortable with them. Otherwise, we need the devs to continue to simulate real life motions as well as they can by implementing small tweaks like this.

[ratszo 17]

I don't think people understand exactly why this is needed. In real life you tend to turn your torso towards where you are trying to look. Rarely do you ever stand perfectly still and just turn your head to look behind you.

In Arma, the purpose of freelook is to do a situational awareness check around you without losing your primary facing (which should be towards the direction you are trying to cover). However, with this current implementation of head turning, it isn't possible to see behind you when you have a backpack or larger item strapped to your back. This is understandable because solely turning your head would produce this effect of having your view blocked by gear. However, in real life, you would actually slightly turn your torso to allow you to see behind you even while you maintain a constant facing thus removing the gear from your direct rear view. You can even do this while running or moving in the direction of your facing. In Arma, this effect can only be produced by actually turning your facing in order to allow your head to pivot which is what this ticket is trying to address.

The devs could even implement a slight torso turn animation as the view begins to exceed the range of when someone would normally keep their body still. Obviously a true simulation would allow the player to control their torso turn separately from their head turning but due to the limitation in control surfaces as well as the unnaturalness of this control scheme, it wouldn't really make much sense. So the best solution is probably to either implement an uncontrollable torso turn as described before or to just simply reduce the blockage of vision due to the gear you are wearing behind you.

Yeah Lev, with torso pivoting we could also see "rifle snaps to free look', rather than, free look snapping back to rifle, as it is now.

[kremator 1065]

I don't understand this. Why is there a problem? Press ALT for freelook, and if you can't see further, move, then press ALT again. If something is behind me, I have to turn around a little to see it.

What we have already is fine.

[five_seven5-7 56]

I don't understand this. Why is there a problem? Press ALT for freelook, and if you can't see further, move, then press ALT again. If something is behind me, I have to turn around a little to see it.

What we have already is fine.

You can´t use freelook when looking through the scope/red dot sight (RMB)

[ratszo 17]

I don't understand this. Why is there a problem? Press ALT for freelook, and if you can't see further, move, then press ALT again. If something is behind me, I have to turn around a little to see it.

What we have already is fine.

I get what he's saying, IRL you can pivot your shoulders to look directly behind you while still walking in the other direction.

Would need new mocap annimations. So....

[spanishsurfer 58]

There is no problem with freelook, down voted.

[ratszo 17]

There is no problem with freelook, down voted.

I wouldn't go as far as to say there's 'no problem' with freelook, but i get your point.

[kklownboy 43]

You can´t use freelook when looking through the scope/red dot sight (RMB)

you cant look over your shoulder with a rifle in your face anyways.

[13islucky 10]

You can´t use freelook when looking through the scope/red dot sight (RMB)

Actually, you can. Unless that scope is a 2D-style one like the ones on the SOS, LRPS, DMS, TMR scopes etc. you should be able to with TrackIR. Assuming you have TrackIR, of course.

[doveman 7]

you cant look over your shoulder with a rifle in your face anyways.

Probably not but I'm not proposing that here anyway (I know you were replying to Five_Seven5-7 but I don't want my request to get lost in other OT ideas).

We should probably be able to look at least as far as our 3 or 6 o'clock down the sights, with our bodies still facing/walking towards 12 o'clock though, so that we can cover our flanks as we advance. At the moment we have to turn our whole bodies and walk sideways, which I think would be impossible to do at anything like normal walking speed in real-life, so is not very realistic. That's probably just as OT as what Five_Seven5-7 said though, so I'll stop now, unless someone tells me that actually the changes that would be needed to implement my original request would make this second request possible as well ;)